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Dealing with character death is always hard. But I think taking out saving and reloading was the right move.

Taking out saving and loading is never the right move. Never. Save points, checkpoints, save-as-you-quit... that's called Fake Difficulty, and it's bullshit. It's a lazy way of artificially lengthening the game. If devs want games to be longer, they can put more content in them, rather than bloating the completion time up with repeated replays of the same area over and over.

I play games to have fun. Not to stretch my e-peen. Not to be frustrated. Real life frustrates me plenty, thanks.

Taking out saving and loading is never the right move. Never. Save points, checkpoints, save-as-you-quit... that's called Fake Difficulty, and it's bullshit. It's a lazy way of artificially lengthening the game. If devs want games to be longer, they can put more content in them, rather than bloating the completion time up with repeated replays of the same area over and over.

I play games to have fun. Not to stretch my e-peen. Not to be frustrated. Real life frustrates me plenty, thanks.

Well actually, the game is continuously saving. You can quite and come back anytime, though you have to clear out the mobs again. But most runs can be easily made in a single sitting, and waypoints are plentiful.

It doesn't make the game longer, but it prevents a hell of a lot of exploits in a randomly generated game.

I've played other games with a heavy influence on random events and content (namely Europa Universalis 3), the temptation was always to quit and go back to a save the minute you got a negative event.

Blizzard knew what it was doing, Diablo 2 would be broken if save scumming was allowed. Other RPGs with no randomly generated content would not suffer as much from being able to save at any time.

I don't save scum, why punish me for something people with no life will do? If I want a specific item bad enough to save scum I'll just spawn it with the dev console and save time.

Just because you can do something doesn't make it worthwhile. Using save scumming you can get the Advanced Power Armor at the very beginning of Fallout 2, making the entire game leading up to the endgame trivial. But why bother? It makes the game too easy, it takes a long time, because you're instantly dead any time you encounter an Enclave patrol.

Punishing the people who play the game properly just to keep people from playing the game in a way the developers don't like is just retarded. Blizzard has this Apple-like desire to control how we play their games.

Case in point: in the MMORPG Final Fantasy XI, red mages (among other jobs) can solo certain endgame boss monsters. It's often insanely difficult, tedious and time-consuming, but people do it out of boredom or e-peen enlargement or whatever. SE doesn't seem to care, and I always thought that was kind of cool. Using strategy and figuring out how to defeat impossible challenges is part of the fun of playing a game.

Back when I played WoW, I remember some warlock soloing some endgame boss and a group of five shadow priests defeating a boss in a 40-member dungeon. I thought that was cool, but Blizzard apparently didn't, patching out the ability, nerfing the involved classes, banning the offending players. That just blows my mind. Why punish a player for using strategy and critical thinking skills to creatively solve a problem?

Seriously, it's bullshit. It'd be like if my old algebra instructor gave me an F for using the quadratic formula instead of factoring. It's not the same as cheating--they're not using hacks or trainers to do it, but using the game itself against itself. That shows strong critical thinking and problem-solving skills. Why punish that? It's stupid.

Oh right, the corporate robber-baron overlords want us all dumb and gullible so they can control us, so we can't have anyone exercising strong critical thinking skills and strategic thought...

@syn: I think you're levelling a lot of unfounded accusations at Blizzard, generally they've always had a decent relationship with their players, for instance Blizzard's patching policies are almost unparalleled. No other company keeps patching games so long after they've been released.

Now Blizzard took the decision to not allow conventional saving. If there was some other means to fix the problems it solved I would say it would be better to use those methods, but there wasn't. When I played Diablo 2 for quite a while I did not find the innability to save and reload to be onerous, in fact after my initial surprise I did not notice it at all. The primary purpose of save/reload is to save your progress, and Diablo does that automatically anyway. This isn't like Super Mario Land where you had to be play the whole game from start to finish with no saving. While in D2 you had to complete a dungeon in a single sitting, waypoints were extremely frequent, and you could just quit once you reached one (and waypoints were useful for a whole host of other reasons...)

Regulating Saving and reloading is a perfectly valid way to modify the game experience, is it the best way? No. But it's not a crime against all gamerdom. Lots of games still use save points.

I think that it's being a bit facetious to say that blizzard is a "corporate robber-baron overlords [that] want us all dumb and gullible so they can control us". They just make PC games, and if they really wanted us dumb and gullible they wouldn't be in the strategy game business (they'd be making rhythm games like Guitar Hero... OH SHI-!)

No other company keeps patching games so long after they've been released.

I know I'm just nitpicking but thats not really true, I think it's better to say not many other companies keep up for so long but then I think thats simply cause alot of other games aren't as massively pop for as long as WoW.

Only really 1 thing that keeps me from getting games I take a great interest in are fees and since I haven't read anything about fees here(unless I missed it somehwere, haven't really kept up with news regarding this game) all good for me.

Well actually, the game is continuously saving. You can quite and come back anytime, though you have to clear out the mobs again. But most runs can be easily made in a single sitting, and waypoints are plentiful.

It doesn't make the game longer, but it prevents a hell of a lot of exploits in a randomly generated game.

I've played other games with a heavy influence on random events and content (namely Europa Universalis 3), the temptation was always to quit and go back to a save the minute you got a negative event.

Blizzard knew what it was doing, Diablo 2 would be broken if save scumming was allowed. Other RPGs with no randomly generated content would not suffer as much from being able to save at any time.

A way to circumvent save abuse would be to determine the drops/events when the level or mobs are generated. Pre-RNGing as it were. I think they handled WoW instances this way.

I don't save scum, why punish me for something people with no life will do? If I want a specific item bad enough to save scum I'll just spawn it with the dev console and save time.

Just because you can do something doesn't make it worthwhile. Using save scumming you can get the Advanced Power Armor at the very beginning of Fallout 2, making the entire game leading up to the endgame trivial. But why bother? It makes the game too easy, it takes a long time, because you're instantly dead any time you encounter an Enclave patrol.

Punishing the people who play the game properly just to keep people from playing the game in a way the developers don't like is just retarded. Blizzard has this Apple-like desire to control how we play their games.

Case in point: in the MMORPG Final Fantasy XI, red mages (among other jobs) can solo certain endgame boss monsters. It's often insanely difficult, tedious and time-consuming, but people do it out of boredom or e-peen enlargement or whatever. SE doesn't seem to care, and I always thought that was kind of cool. Using strategy and figuring out how to defeat impossible challenges is part of the fun of playing a game.

Why are there laws that regulate gun use? It's not like I'm going to go around shooting random people. If I wanted an AK, I'd just buy it off the black market. In fact, why do we even have police? It's not like I'm going to go commit any crimes.

No... please don't argue like that. I can understand you not liking it, but there are such things as necessary evil. And I'm only conceding it as "evil" just to respect your opinion, because I personally never once found the auto-saving thing as annoying.

Look at it this way. If save scumming was allowed, what would happen?
A). A good portion of the population will be armed to the max within 2 weeks
B). The other portion of the population too lazy to or don't want to save scum will complain about it being imba
C). The economy will collapse because items are no longer hard to find
D). It is easy to get to the apex, and therefore, people will quit very quickly
E). All of the above

If I was in Blizzard's position, sorry but I'd rather implement auto-save and risk complains from you than to kill the game.

Quote:

Originally Posted by synaesthetic

Back when I played WoW, I remember some warlock soloing some endgame boss and a group of five shadow priests defeating a boss in a 40-member dungeon. I thought that was cool, but Blizzard apparently didn't, patching out the ability, nerfing the involved classes, banning the offending players. That just blows my mind. Why punish a player for using strategy and critical thinking skills to creatively solve a problem?

*shrug* I don't know about that incident, but that still doesn't sound very relevent to the issue of whether or not auto-save in D2 is fair.

Quote:

Originally Posted by synaesthetic

Seriously, it's bullshit. It'd be like if my old algebra instructor gave me an F for using the quadratic formula instead of factoring. It's not the same as cheating--they're not using hacks or trainers to do it, but using the game itself against itself. That shows strong critical thinking and problem-solving skills. Why punish that? It's stupid.

My calc professor did not give credit if we used differentiation techniques other than the ones he's testing us on (e.g. testing on definition of derivatives, but using power rule learned from physics). Sounds pretty fair to me.

Quote:

Originally Posted by synaesthetic

Oh right, the corporate robber-baron overlords want us all dumb and gullible so they can control us, so we can't have anyone exercising strong critical thinking skills and strategic thought...

Wow, er, I don't want to label you a Blizzard hater just as I don't want to get labelled a Blizzard fanboi, but dude, chill.

Back when I played WoW, I remember some warlock soloing some endgame boss and a group of five shadow priests defeating a boss in a 40-member dungeon. I thought that was cool, but Blizzard apparently didn't, patching out the ability, nerfing the involved classes, banning the offending players. That just blows my mind. Why punish a player for using strategy and critical thinking skills to creatively solve a problem?

Seriously, it's bullshit. It'd be like if my old algebra instructor gave me an F for using the quadratic formula instead of factoring. It's not the same as cheating--they're not using hacks or trainers to do it, but using the game itself against itself. That shows strong critical thinking and problem-solving skills. Why punish that? It's stupid.

Oh right, the corporate robber-baron overlords want us all dumb and gullible so they can control us, so we can't have anyone exercising strong critical thinking skills and strategic thought...

That is because being able to solo/5man 25man+ bosses without overly outgearing it by an expansion is often seen as an exploit. Why should people who did not roll a certain class (and do not have time to make a max level alt of every other class) be punished for their choice?

"you are not allowed into this fight because you are playing the wrong class for this encounter".

There are smart tactics such as stacking on melee for void reaver, or how eredar twins is executed.

TBH, not much info is out about the game yet and a lot of people already seem to have given it their final judgement. Please do not allow company hate to overshadow a game with potentials. Discuss again when beta comes out?

I know I'm just nitpicking but thats not really true, I think it's better to say not many other companies keep up for so long but then I think thats simply cause alot of other games aren't as massively pop for as long as WoW.

It's not just WoW, Starcraft, Warcraft 3 and Diablo 2 were all receiving patches long after people stopped buying the games in significant numbers. I've never been a particularly religious player of Blizzard Games (Micro isn't my thing...) but I have to give them credit for not abandoning their games once the $ run out.

Look. I'm an adult. I'm busy. I have things to do. I don't want a game that dictates when it saves to me. I want to save any fucking time. Because maybe I'll need to go run some errands. Maybe my worse half needs my help. Maybe I'm just tired and want to crash for the night.

I loathe restricted saving and loading almost as much as I loathe random encounters. And yes, I do have a serious problem with Blizzard as a company, just like I have an issue with Apple as a company. I disagree with their business practices. I hate companies that try to restrict your use of their products. If I pay for something, it should be mine, and I should be able to do with it whatever I wish.

I have to agree with synaesthetic that Diablo1 is far superior to Diablo2 and it's not simply because of the saving issue. Gold in D2 is virtually worthless, you can get far better stuffs by killing the end boss in each act a few times than you can buy with 2 millions gold. You can use the gold to gamble but killing the main boss a dozen times net you far better stuffs than you gamble 100 times. D2 drops more magic items than D1 but they limit your inventory so you spend more times deciding what to keep than go fight monsters. Why can they give us a rune bag to keep all the runes and a gem chest to keep the gems. How in the world could 6 diamonds take the space of a plate armor I ask you that? All this means that instead of spending time adventuring and fighting, you sitting there worrying about stats. Unfortunately, no matter how much you grind whatever stats you gain will not make you godly unless you play at Hell level. But then at Hell level the bosses are godly themselves so things even out to just the same. Which means that all the time you spend searching for that particular runes or gems not so significant after all. All the new ideas in D2 such as runes, gems and set items are there to encourage you to grind and grind making you feel the game is longer, tougher and has more things for you to do instead of giving you more stories, more worlds to explore. Not to say that the atmosphere in D1 is far superior to D2. So if D3 is anything like D2 I'm not gonna be bother with it at all.

I have to agree with synaesthetic that Diablo1 is far superior to Diablo2 and it's not simply because of the saving issue. Gold in D2 is virtually worthless, you can get far better stuffs by killing the end boss in each act a few times than you can buy with 2 millions gold. You can use the gold to gamble but killing the main boss a dozen times net you far better stuffs than you gamble 100 times. D2 drops more magic items than D1 but they limit your inventory so you spend more times deciding what to keep than go fight monsters. Why can they give us a rune bag to keep all the runes and a gem chest to keep the gems. How in the world could 6 diamonds take the space of a plate armor I ask you that? All this means that instead of spending time adventuring and fighting, you sitting there worrying about stats. Unfortunately, no matter how much you grind whatever stats you gain will not make you godly unless you play at Hell level. But then at Hell level the bosses are godly themselves so things even out to just the same. Which means that all the time you spend searching for that particular runes or gems not so significant after all. All the new ideas in D2 such as runes, gems and set items are there to encourage you to grind and grind making you feel the game is longer, tougher and has more things for you to do instead of giving you more stories, more worlds to explore. Not to say that the atmosphere in D1 is far superior to D2. So if D3 is anything like D2 I'm not gonna be bother with it at all.

Well, Diablo is not about enjoying stories and exploring worlds, it's about looting and upgrading your gears.
It's the matter of genres.
If you don't like this genre you can play the classic RPGs instead.

I understand that Diablo game is not about exploring but about looting and fighting and upgrading your stuffs but if that is the case they should do something about the inventory system. In D1 you can throw your extra stuff on the ground if you are not sure if you want to keep it or not and then go back for more looting which is why I loved D1 but not in D2 your stuffs will disappear. Not to say that in D2 there are more stuffs for you to consider such as gems and runes and those take tons of space. Also, moderate amount of grinding is fine with me but D2 is a "grind fest". Fighting the same scenario 30 times can get boring you know especially the stuffs that you get are mostly marginally better than before. What I want to see in D3 is a better inventory system so I don't have to spend so much time deciding what to keep and less grinding so I can spend more time looting and kicking monsters' ass and not becoming a complete stat whore.